Garden Design: 8-Part Series

Online: Thursdays, March 6, 13, 27 & April 10, 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
In-person: Saturdays, March 22, April 5, 19, & 26, 9:30 a.m.-4 p.m.

The Garden Design: 8-Part Series will guide experienced gardeners or professional landscapers through the steps of designing a garden from start to finish. Led by professional landscape designers, students will learn about the theory of design, exercise creativity, and build the technical skills involved in designing a garden through online and in-person classes. Instruction will also consider timing, budget, material selection, management, and goals. By signing up for the full 8-part series, students will get eight classes for the price of seven.

Schedule

Class 1 – Garden Design: Foundations & Inspirations

Whether designing one garden or several, the first step is to learn the foundation and classical inspirations of garden design. In this visually captivating online class, landscape designer Irene Barber will introduce students to the universal design principles that have evolved from ancient civilizations and are applied as a language that is represented throughout different garden themes and cultures. From kitchen gardens to tea gardens and even permaculture gardens, discover how to apply these diverse foundations and inspirations essential to all designers today.

Class 2 – Garden Design: A New England Lens

Understanding geography and cultural history is pertinent when making garden design decisions, particularly in New England, which has unique and diverse landscapes. In this introductory online garden design class, students will learn how to establish a sense of place and belonging wherever their prospective garden will be located, from river valleys to rolling fields to narrow, rocky corridors. No matter the elements you want to incorporate, this class will help you get creative while staying true to a sense of place.

Class 3 – Garden Design: Creating a Base Plan

Creating a base plan for your garden may not be considered the most exciting part of the process, but it is an all-important one! This in-person class combines lecture and practicum and will focus on measuring techniques for a new garden area or selected landscape area of your property. We will also develop a base plan, which serves as the beginning stages of capturing existing inventory and conditions. During this session, we will demonstrate how to use scales and translate gathered information into a scaled drawing and a key.

Class 4 – Garden Design: Assess & Sketch

With a base plan in hand to begin the site inventory process, this class continues the essential work of assessing existing landscape elements that influence design decisions, including topography, hardscape features, water, buildings, wildlife, and more. This online session will help students discover factors they might not have considered before and learn how to document and sketch out a visual diagram that provides a clearer understanding of any variables to consider. Students will practice drafting skills, develop a design key, and evaluate the conditions of features and variables on a site.

Class 5 – Garden Design: Conceptual Planning

When we design a garden, we do much more than create a space to show off favorite flowers; we reflect personality and a sense of place, incorporating circulation, function, and design principles. Join us at the Gardens as we continue to apply landscape design principles, as introduced in Class 1 – Foundations and Inspirations, to explore the conceptual process that awakens creativity and trains the brain to draw freehand to form and render multiple schematics and design ideas. There’s significant value in exercising different concepts, including organizational strategies and functional choices, in order to come to a design solution that feels considerate and fulfilling.

Class 6 – Garden Design: Structure & Movement

Applying effective structure and movement to a garden fulfills a desired experience, engaging a person to physically or visually move throughout the living space with a purpose or goal. Structure and movement establish a program arranging key components and complementary features within and transitioning between spaces. Beyond thinking of a row of shrubs, a fence, a path, or a wall, students will learn how to shape and organize an area for use, transition, circulation, and enclosure to lead the eye to micro and macro destinations. We’ll explore design patterns and basic geometry to achieve our goals. With a few conceptual plans sketched, the next step is to practice applying these organizational and aesthetically functional tools.

Class 7 – Garden Design: It’s in the Layers

A well-designed year-round garden is made up of layers, from groundcovers to the highest canopies. A garden design planview helps to show detailed arrangement of the materials, including any paths, fences, walls, buildings, and plants. This class explores the drawing process of how to clearly select, separate, and illustrate layers of information onto layered drafts of trace paper. The most important layer of the design includes the Base Plan, created in Class 3 of this Series. Students will leave the interactive workshop with a new or refreshed perspective of their garden and overall landscape and know how to articulate the layers that make for clear and comprehensive garden design.

Class 8 – Garden Design: Final Plan to Fruition

A comprehensive drawn plan enables designers to understand the scope and requirements of implementing a new garden. In this final session of the Garden Design: 8-Part Series, we focus on the final steps of the design process from paper to building and enjoyment. After a brief recap of the design process, we’ll address how to merge layers of information that are essential to communicating the design. Through lecture and group collaboration, students will present their design projects and exchange constructive feedback. We’ll explore sustainable means for making the design come to fruition, including developing a budget, material selection and procurement, identifying the manual and mechanical installation processes, and creating a garden management plan. Students should come with a design project they’ve been working on, no matter the stage.